


Any Port in Storm

by CypressSunn



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canadian Shack, F/M, First Kiss, First Time, Intimacy, Mistletoe Exchange, Snowed In, They get a dog, survivalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:42:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,838
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27983253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CypressSunn/pseuds/CypressSunn
Summary: “Unless you thought you were going to last on this mountain without an ounce ofsurvivalism.”Nile shrugs. “Surviving is just kind of our baseline.”Booker looks at her with utter disbelief. “Mon dieu, you were going to starve without me.”
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman
Comments: 59
Kudos: 221
Collections: Mistletoe Exchange 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glorious_spoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/gifts).



> Hello my dear Mistletoe Giftee. Please know this was a work of joy and terror, as I had finals week and a covid scare durring the span of writing and posting this. I truly hope you can enjoy it anyway. 
> 
> Happy reading, and happy holidays!

_ “Winter is a prism in reverse.”  
— Brooke Matson _

“We’re right behind you, Boss.”

Nile’s snow boots stop short of a rickey metal ramp leading to the last aeromedical evac. It is a broad, overbearing aircraft, stark black metal against the icy white of the mountaintop. There was little to no room to land it, and even less room to load it with warm, desperate bodies seeking refuge. There isn’t even a rail for the ramp leaning over a dark crevasse.

Ahead, Andy nods, giving the 10-4 signal as she walks up the incline over thin open air. At this elevation, all words are prone to whipping away in icy bursts. So Nile appreciates the confirmation. She stands at the ready, holding her breath until Andy steps through the hatch.

“See you at the landing zone,” she calls back, or Nile thinks it’s what she says. The damn wind picked up. Just a taste of what the coming storm has in store, from the meteorological readouts and the pit in Nile’s stomach that tells her… something is about to happen.

But as fortune would have it, whatever that may be has thus far been averted. They arrived just in time to the mountain range, successfully sending three waves of families and miners down to safety. The mission so far is going as smooth as these jobs possibly can. Rescue and recovery ops tend to have less carnage, less killing, and were always among Nile’s favorites.

She tells herself this over and over watching Andy’s carrier take off. They’ve achieved all they set out to do. Take the win.

“Surprised you didn’t offer to hold her hand up the ramp,” says Booker, coming up from behind her. The blowing winds from the lift off kicked up snow all around them and Booker delicately dusts off the chilly remnants from her shoulder.

“Thought about offering. Figured she wouldn’t let me.” It had taken enough effort to convince Andy she didn’t need to be on the last flight out to start with.

Booker nods. “Smart. She can kill us and get away with it, afterall.”

The spot on the horizon is growing smaller and smaller. Andy and the others are in the clear. Nile shivers against the wind again and Booker slips a gloved hand around her elbow to direct her away.

“Come on. The personnel evac is waiting. Let’s get off this damn mountain.”

Nile traipses after him, hopping and stepping in the snow prints left by Booker’s much larger shoe size when the snow gets deeper. He must be aware of it, amused at least, because he’s taking shorter steps than usual.

“Having fun back there?”

The knot in her stomach loosens. “Just taking in the view.”

“The back of my head?”

“Definitely that, probably the best vantage of looking at your face,” and when he glances back at her, she has to laugh. “But seeing the Rockies in all their glory ain’t bad either.”

“One snowed-in hill is the same as every other snowed-in hill.”

“Says the guy who’s already bored of everywhere and everyone.”

They swing around to the lower shelf of rock where the last helicopter shudders from its precarious frozen perch. This side of the rock is barricaded from the slicing wind and Nile hears Booker clearly when he mutters, “Who said I was bored with _everyone_?” and Nile beams, more than a little content with herself. But Booker shrugs and continues; “Joe still manages to crack a joke I haven’t heard before every now and again.”

“Oh, funny. Very funny.” She shoves at him, not enough to send him rolling down the mountain, but enough to tell him she’d like to.

They’ll be the last two to board, from the looks of it. Their pilot, Wei, is waving them over from the hatch. He’s bundled up in civilian wear, jumping up and down to stay warm but clearly delighted to see them. His light dusting of gray hair peeking out from under his thin little hat. Andy had warned Nile not to be taken in by his grandfatherly charms and the adorable pictures of his bichon puppies he keeps on his phone. They could only use a pilot a few times before rotating them out. But Nile was already sure she would miss this one.

Booker is holding his hand out to lift Nile into the compartment when he turns suddenly. He hears it first, before her but she can see the shapes coming into view. A man and two more, his children perhaps, running after them at full speed.

“Shit,” utters Booker at the same time Nile realizes, “They need our help.”

“Nile! Wait!”

But she has already made a break for it. She meets them halfawy, the adult doubled over and breathing thick white tuffs of breath. She scoops up one of the children, the littlest, and urges them on. “This way, it’s not far. We’ll warm you right up, okay?”

“Thank you, thank you,” the father says, half sobbing.

Booker and Wei are standing with their heads together, taking turns looking back at Nile. 

“It’ll be a tight fit,” she warns them, lifting the two children into the hatch. “But you made it just in time.”

“We thought the storm would get us before we could get out,” the newcomer wheezes. “They’re saying no one’s gonna survive it. The storm of the century.”

“CNN likes to say that every year,” Nile assures him with a grin. She turns back to her partner and the pilot and their expressions have not eased.

“We can’t take the weight,” says Wei quiet and regretful. “We will not be able to lift off.”

Nile shakes her head. “But we have too. We can’t leave them here.”

“We’re already pushing the load limit,” Booker reminds her. His voice is gentle, as if the more softly he says it the easier Nile might live with it. But she won’t.

“Then we have to call the other plane back.”

Booker steers her aside, his head ducked low so only she could hear. “They’re out of range, and they were at capacity, too. We can’t take anymore—” Frantic worry rising, she tries to interrupt him but he cuts her off. “Nile, have you ever seen a nose diving plane? A helicopter spinning out, bodies thrown everywhere? No? Good. Because it’s a horrible way to die, people in pieces, fuel burning everywhere. Even worse when you know that it’s coming. Now, I know you want to help, but if we do this, no one will survive. We would be killing everyone.”

Nile closes her eyes. There’s no fighting physics or inescapable truths. Unless.

“You’re right,” she tells him and for a moment he looks relieved. “I’ll stay behind.”

“What? No!” Nile can sense the switch turning in his mind. He’s moving from remorseful and bargaining to something else.

Nile looks away from him and his readymade argument, staring out over the darkening horizon. She speaks louder this time, so Wei and the father can hear her. “I said, they can take my place. I’ll stay.”

Booker laughs. Nile knows this laugh, his ‘it’s just a flesh wound’ chuckle that he pulls out anytime he’s nearly dismembered. “Oh, will you? How very valiant of you.”

Nile is rethinking her suppressed urge to push him off the mountain. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You’re barely sixty kilos! Leaving you behind will hardly split the difference.” Nile makes an indignant noise. Booker ignores her. “You will go down the mountain and I will stay.”

“If you’re staying, I’m staying—”

“We are not arguing about this—”

“I’m sorry, I forgot who was in charge of what we argue about!”

“This is not the time!”

“Stop!” yells Wei. “Neither of you are listening. Anyone who stays here will be trapped. Weeks of no food, no electricity, no medicine. It will be one storm after another. No one else will be coming up this mountain. Anyone who stays here… they will die.”

The wind picks up, barreling past them. The blades of the helicopter shift and shift impercetibly. Nile looks at Wei, then back at Booker. Booker looks at Wei, then back at Nile.

“You’re going, that’s the end of it!”

“I am _staying_ , and that is the end of it!”

“I will knock you unconscious and strap you in there myself.”

“Try it, old man.”

The sound of a distant rumble moves in the distance, like mounds of snow shifting. Booker doesn’t blink. Nile doesn’t budge an inch. Wei looks like he may cry. “We are running out of time,” he begs.

Booker sighs. It’s music to Nile’s ears. It’s his defeated sigh, not unlike his ‘Nile was right all along’ sigh. “You won’t go, then?”

“Nope.” She grins victoriously.

He curses. “Fine. We stay together.”

*

The eternally grateful father shakes and shakes Nile’s hand, then Booker’s, and then Nile again. Wei tearfully wishes them luck even though he clearly believes they’ll be dead by nightfall. And he could be right. Who knows many times they’ll have to regenerate before dawn.

The helicopter has a shaky takeoff, but Nile expected it. Booker warned lowly her that even without them aboard, they still stood the risk of being over capacity. The wind is strong and its less than ideal flying conditions. Nile holds onto her necklace while it tilts to and fro, and prays. She tries to stay long enough to watch them disappear further out into some semblance of safety but Booker has other ideas.

“We need to get out of here there before the storm hits.” He flashes a ring of keys. “Over the ridge is a set of wheels. Shelter is farther out.”

“Where did those come from?”

“The family you just saved. People love parting with their earthly possessions when their lives are on the line.”

“Are the roads even clear enough to drive?”

“We’ll have to see.”

Booker does not say much else as they trek over the craggy landscape. Not like Nile expects him to. He wouldn’t ever tell her he doesn’t want to be here or that he blames her for it. He’s not anywhere near as heartless as his pragmatism makes him out to be. And he’s far from an ‘oversharer’, as Joe often pointed out. The broody, quiet thing and avoiding all talk he deemed ‘unnecessary’ was basically what set off the chain reaction of bad impulses leading to the Merrick Pharmaceuticals fiasco in the first place.

Booker points ahead and there’s the promised four wheel drive. There’s a layer of scantily wiped away frost on the truck’s windshield and the telltale tread of snow tires below.

Climbing, Booker turns the engine while Nile settles in the passenger’s seat. She waits for Booker to elaborate, but he doesn’t. He forgo wearing his own seat belt but he does hit a few buttons that look like seat warmers and Nile is instantly cozier.

“We got gas?”

“Full tank. We’ll get there in time.”

“But where to, though?”

“The last passenger on the helicopter said he was borrowing a friend’s cabin. Should be halfway down the mountain. Said he wasn’t sure if it was sturdy enough to keep us. But we’ll see.” He shifts the truck into drive. He seems perfectly confident driving over gusting roads as they bend and weave around the side of the mountain.

The ease he exudes in the terrible conditions is a comfort. Nile’s died a few times in vehicular collisions. It’s a brutal way to go. A lot of blunt force trauma and confusion. The pain comes fast and the mind goes slow. Real slow. Last time, Nile had been thrown from the cab of a semi after it started hydroplaning in a speeding gunfight. She’d been laying in the road, somewhere in the middle of dying and healing the rain poured. When she came Booker was leaning over her, knelt down on the pavement with his wet hair slick to his forehead and holding her hand. Or maybe she imagined he did. It’s hard to tell with the neck out of alignment and the nerves completely dead. He stayed with her until she could walk again, telling her not to rush. The others would capture the traffickers.

But Booker was the one who came back for her, to stay with her. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised he’d refused to get on the helicopter without her.

“We’re here,” Booker announces at last. Nile can see a dark outline through his window that looks big enough to be some sort of shelter. But the snow is starting to fall, faster and thicker. She can’t be sure of what she sees. So she trusts Booker when he takes her hand and leads her onwards.

*

The door unlocks after several turns of different keys. They rush inside and start battening down the hatches. Booker clears the rooms with his gun in hand while Nile seals every latch and lock she finds. Satisfied the location is secure and abandoned by all but them, they turn to the next most pressing matter. That it’s absolutely freezing.

“How is it colder in here than it is out there?” Nile asks, blowing and blowing on her hands.

“Because out there, you’re running for your life and in here you’re standing still,” Booker points out before he whips off his coat and tosses it around Nile. Nile wants to protest the extra added layer. He’s only got on his fleece zip up and a plaid shirt underneath without it. But it seems he’s tired of losing arguments against Nile because he doesn’t even let her speak. “Just keep moving until I get this fire going. It won’t take long.”

He shivers when stoops down to an iron wood stove. There’s a small stack of cut logs and a can of fuel nearby. She’s sure Booker has his trusty zippo lighter he carries everywhere and soon enough Nile smells smoke. 

“There. Come warm up.”

He waves her over and Nile plunks down beside him. Striping off her gloves, she warms each finger to the orange yellow glow. It’s a truly beautiful sight.

“How we lookin’, Book?” she asks him. “Will the shelter hold?”

“Seems well built, recently maintained; so the roof shouldn’t cave in. Weather proofed windows, insulation, and two heat sources, with this stove and a fireplace in the other room, which hopefully isn’t decorative.”

Nile nods, and feels strange for a moment, thinking how she’s only ever heard Booker speak like this with Andy. When he was giving her status reports, tactical intel, and otherwise acquiescing to her command.

“Then what’s your assessment? Think we’ll make it?”

“Of course we will.”

“But if we had to ballpark the number of deaths to get us across the finish line? What would it be?”

“No one is dying, Nile. Not once or twice. Not at all.” Booker’s certainty always had a firm resolution to it. He was not a man who wavered. Never made pledges or promises lightly. She had come to learn it was just the way about him. Critical and relentless, grouchy and constant. And no matter how small or insignificant, if he gave his word she knew she could depend on it. Could take it in her hands, tuck it in her back pocket, carry it close for safekeeping. 

But she knew he didn’t think he could depend on her anywhere near as much.

“Here,” she shifts, trying to return his coat. “You can have it back.”

But he turns it back around on her, rubbing her shoulders to generate a pleasant, warm friction. “Keep it until I find some blankets.”

Nile moves to stand, hating feeling useless. Especially when Booker is only here because of her in the first place. “I could go—”

“No need,” he insists. “Stay warm.”

Nile sighs. He never pulled this on her in a firefight, so at least he trusted her to be his teammate somewhere.

“You know, you might not know this,” she calls after him while he’s cracking open what looks to be a closet door, “but if we were ever trapped in a desert, I’ve got six different tricks up my sleeve for extracting and conserving water.”

“That so?”

“Hmhmm. Then maybe you’d value some of my input if you were dying of heat exhaustion in the Sahara right now.”

“A pleasant thought. Warms me right to the bone.” He’s laughing as he’s lugging something back over to her. A box; and inside are folded wool blankets. He retrieves a pillow from somewhere, maybe that couch shove against the far wall and a rolled up set of thermal socks. Nile is debating on calling dibs or offering them up to Booker when he silently slips them into her palm with zero hesitation.

“You didn’t have to do this, Book.”

He waves her off. “I’m sure we’ll find more socks.”

“I meant,” she grabs his hand, so he looks at her. Really sees her. “You didn’t have to stay.”

His thumb brushes over her knuckles. “Of course, I did.”

“But—”

“You’ve already won enough arguments for the day,” he tells her, spreading a blankets over the wood flooring, one thick layer atop another. Behind the glass door of the woodstove, embers keen and pop softly. “Rest now, so you can wake up and argue some more.”

“Why do you have an axe?” is the first thing Nile asks, blinking away from where she lay on the floor. “You can’t already be going Jack Torrance on me. We only just got here.”

“Jacques, who?” he puzzles, head tilting against the axe held over his shoulder.

“The Shining? Redrum? _Here’s Johnny?!_ ” Nile groans. “Really, nothing?”

He shakes his head. Whoever told her the French were cultured had been wrong.

“I’ll be back before dark. Don’t wander off until then.”

Nile isn’t sure how much of an outdoors-man the man she’s trapped with could possibly manage to be. but he seems quite sure of himself when he hoists and turns to leave.

“What, you’re gonna be chopping wood until sundown?”

“No. Why would I be chopping wood?”

“For a fire?”

Booker makes a pained expression. “You can’t burn green wood, Nile. Logs need to dry out for months at least.”

“Or?”

“Or they barely catch fire, or when they do its more smoke than heat.”

“Is this when you tell me you were a sherpa on Everest or something?”

“The _Sherpa_ are a people—”

“Or some kinda mountaineering french fur trapper in the new world.”

“The _coureur des bois_ were long gone by the time I was born.”

“Doomsday survivalist whackjob?”

“By that, are you asking if i am aware of the obvious climate crisis and impending food shortages which will cause civilization to backslide into a feudal system in a nuclear wasteland? Then yes. But right now, I'm scavenging for supplies.” He stops for a moment to look at her. “Unless you thought you were going to last on this mountain without an ounce of _survivalism_.”

Nile shrugs. “Surviving is just kind of our baseline.”

Booker looks at her with utter disbelief. “ _Mon dieu_ , you were going to starve without me.”

*

For the storm of the century, it’s pretty slow going at first. Booker warned her it would be, but not to let it fool her. Bouts of constant snowfall broken up by bright stretches of light and calm. Then the winds would pellet them and the temperatures would plummet.

It happens more and more these days. Like the world is off its axis, storms spiking with greater frequency. Summer tempests shatter islands, rivers flooding croplands, and insurmountable snow falls bury the northlands.

There was less and less refuge to be found.

They were lucky to be hear, as meager as their surroundings were. In the daylight Nile has a better picture of it all. Carved furniture and polished cupboards. Looking for something to do instead of waiting on Booker, she explores the cabin. 

The walls are tightly packed log, and she sees the wood stove nestled in a freestanding wall that shares a chimney with a fireplace on the other side. There are plenty of cupboards and closets. Only two enclosed rooms, one bedroom with a traditional fireplace, and a washroom alongside it. Otherwise, the roof is slanted, almost lopsided. There’s a thin staircase leading to a second level nook, an overlooking indoor balcony with a row of bookcases under cobwebs. While the whole place is obviously crafted to be quaint and cozy, Nile can’t help but think she and Booker will be living right on top of each other.

Under a woven rug, Nile finds a trapdoor that is more exciting in theory than practice. It leads to a root cellar and a stockpile of cut firewood. It all looks plenty dry, coated in hard resin and not remotely green. Then there a more boxes. An unlocked chest. Most of its contents is useless, like the extensive first aid kid and medical supplies. But the box of non-perishables and other vacuum sealed foods makes her race triumphantly back up the wooden ladder.

On the table she leaves the folded blankets, condensed milk, canned soups. A box of ammunition for a firearm that doesn’t seem to be present. Fuel and the lamp it goes to, a hot plate. Soap, empty plastic water jugs. Toiletries packed in with some candles, but not much.

The sun’s barely going down when Booker comes back. He’s pulling a small crate packed with jars, fabrics, and canisters. He drops the load of it and sniffs the air.

“Is that coffee?”

“Depends on if you think the instant pour and mix powder counts as coffee.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers.” 

Nile hands him the ready-made mug. There was no glassware to be found in this little mountain getaway. The only thing counted as serviceable drinkware was entire cupboard full of novelty mugs, all of which read pithy little sayings that ranged from sarcastic to crude.

The mug Booker was drinking out of read: _DEFINITELY NOT VODKA_ , which Nile had selected especially for him. She couldn’t help but feel it spoke to his soul.

“Good find,” he tells her, smiling faintly.

Nile waves his attention over to her pyramid stack of canned goods. She’d gotten a little bored sitting around.

“These are all well and good,” he says, inspecting the soup labels, “but it won’t get us as far as you think.”

Nile makes an indigent noise. “ _Monsieur_ , you’re a very unpleasant man and hereby banned from my rations.”

And Booker tries to laugh. He does. But he can’t quite move his humor around whatever is clearly bugging him. He sets down he mug. “Have you ever gone hungry, Nile?”

His serious tone throws her and before she can prepare herself, an old hurt overtakes her when she answers, “Yes.”

“I believe you when you say that.” He nods, but doesn’t look at her. “But I think I have it on good authority that you’ve never been driven to eating boot leather or raw crow.”

Comprehension rips through her like a lightning strike. Minus the gallows and the French muskets, the frostbitten ground under the darkening sky would very much resemble Booker’s first death.

Nile wants to say something, the right something, but Booker beats her to it.

“We don’t know how long we are going to be here. By now the others figured out what’s happened but we’re stuck here. Together. We need to be ready for a long haul. Don’t expect this to be easy.”

Nile can tell he thinks she doesn’t know what she’s signed up for. And maybe she doesn’t. But all she knows is there was no other alternative.

“Where did you get all this other stuff?” she asks, changing the subject.

“There is a tourist lodge up a ways. We evac’d some of their guests. Ruined the axe while breaking in but we have a good few preserves there.”

“Why don’t we just go crash there?”

“Too big to heat. Once the power goes—”

“—the space becomes an icebox. Right.”

Booker half smiles while organizing his finds. He never seems to mind Nile finishing his thoughts aloud.

“People there just left their clothes?”

“Hotels always have a lost and found.”

“Smart.” Nile would never have considered that. But she’s never been a thief. 

Its funny how often circumstances have required Booker to select clothes for Nile. She finds a sweatshirt, jogging pants, and button downs to layer. It’ll help while she’s keeping warm under the blankets.

“Oh, I forgot to mention… I think the family that was staying here were planning on roughing it out in tents. There’s really only one bed.”

“The couch looks sturdy enough.”

“The couch is a death trap.” Nile sits hesitantly on it. She bounces on the springs, which scritch with a squeaky grind.

“Somehow I’m sure I’ll survive it,” Booker jokes.

Nile stops. She furrows her brow, tuning to Booker but before she can speak he cuts her off.

“Non! Do not even start.”

“I’m taking the couch, Book.”

He drags a hand over his face. “Nile, you are sleeping in the bed.”

“Except you’ve done all the scavenging, all the shoveling too from the looks of it. I think you earned it. I’ll stay up on the couch, I don’t know, stay close to the door.”

“This isn’t about who’s done more work—”

“Doesn’t seem to be about fairness either.”

“I care about fairness as much as the blizzard outside does. There is only one bed and you are the one sleeping in it.”

“You keep arguing like I’m just going to let you have your way. How did that work out last time?” 

“Why do you have to be difficult? Just take the bed.”

“Why do you even care so much if I don't… Wait,” Nile gapes, looking at him sideways, “are you trying to be a gentleman right now?”

“What do you mean, _trying_?”

“You are. You’re doing this because you’re a man, and I’m not. Did no one tell you chivalry is dead?”

“Considering our tangential relation with death, who’s to say chivalry isn’t immortal too?”

Nile waves him off, and lays out lengthwise on the couch. “You’re not sticking me with all the soft comforts because you think that’s what you have to do when stuck out here with a girl.”

“No, but it’s the right thing to do when trapped with a _woman,_ ” Booker insists. “A very stubborn, in-over-her-head woman.”

Nile gives him a look.

“If Andy were here she would simply take the bed and cackle herself to sleep.”

“I’m not Andy.”

“Yes. I’ve noticed.”

She closes her eyes and feigns sleep, because the whole argument is ridiculous so why shouldn’t she? And if a metal spring is sticking her in the back, Booker doesn’t need to know that. She fels him nudge at her feet, trying to make room for himself to sit down. She lets him, curling up into a ball, tucking her knees to her chest.

“Nile, the storm that is hitting… It is going to be bad.”

“I know. You keep saying.”

“There will not be many comforts to come once its here, once its really here. So whatever comfort we can manage, I want—” He trails off. Nile cracks an eye open. She can see he’s looking embarrassed. “I would prefer it if you were less miserable.”

“You’ve already got the market cornered on misery, Book.”

He scoffs. “So you’re done pulling punches, are you?”

“Whatever it takes to win. Or…”

“Or?”

“The bed is big enough for two,” she concedes. “So long as you don’t get any ideas.”

Booker says something low and dirty in French, threatening to throw Nile in the snow.

“What was that?”

“Nothing, nothing,” he assures. “I’m sure we’ll have no trouble in that department.”

*

When they do eat, they eat slow. Military rations, granola and nut butters, dried fruits, packaged tuna.

“Is freezing the worst way you’ve ever died?” Nile asks after swallowing down more dried out trail mix. It’s not much for small talk, but she really does want to know.

“ _Oui_. Without doubt.”

“I think my worst death was…” Nile muses, thinking harder while Booker sniggers into his drink. “What’s funny? I can’t have a worst death?”

“You’re just so _young._ ”

Nile throws a cashew at him. “Maybe my worst death was flying out a high rise to kill a smarmy pharma-bro.”

_“Touché_.”

“But I was gonna say, the worst death was probably getting stabbed in the stomach? Weirdly violating. Real gross.”

“You’ve never been stabbed to death,” Booker tells her, setting his fork down. 

“Um, yes I have.”

“No. I’m with you on every mission. Every last one. You’ve fallen, and you’ve been shot, and you were trapped with all that smoke inhalation. But not that. I would have noticed. You could not have been stabbed without me being there—”

“Except, I kinda was. In the New York job. Remember, we jumped those guys when we climbed up the balcony. You went after the ones who ran out into the hall and I went to go for the other one, with the bad face tattoos. He was hiding behind a curtain in the bathroom. Stabbed me right through it.” Nile shifts, feeling her abdomen. “It wasn’t just once, either. It was over and over. And watching all the blood just… pour out of me like wasn’t mine anymore, you know?”

Booker sits back in his chair.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to ruin your appetite.”

“You were covered in blood,” he says, remembering. “But I thought it was his.”

“Well, I did get one good hit in. He definitely was bleeding when he got away from me.”

“Your shirt was torn. Why didn’t I notice?” He narrows his eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not anyone’s fault. I was dead and back by the time you were there again. And you finished him off with that double tap, remember?”

“Should have killed him slower,” he says more to himself than her.

“We’re not sadists, Book.”

“You just told me that he caused you the worst death you’ve ever felt. That is not something to be taken lightly. He should have answered for it.”

“We don’t die!” she reminds him, as if he could ever forget. But sometimes when it was her, he always seemed to. “Or at last, we don’t stay dead. We don’t scar. We don’t stay maimed. None of it lasts. So it doesn’t really seem fair to dole out revenge like it costs us anything.”

Booker says nothing back and Nile thinks maybe she’s somehow mad him angry, offended him. He picks up his plate and his mug lettered with BITCH FUEL and tosses them in the sink. 

“It always costs something, Nile.”

*

In bed, things don’t feel any less weird. They’re both in sweats and long sleeved shirts and Nile can’t help but let her mind drift to how long it’s been since she shared anything like this with anyone. A mattress, a bedroom, a meal for two.

It all feels so intimate, even though it’s his back that’s facing her as he lay towards the door. Nile herself is facing the window where the snowfall still flutters by. When the lights are out and all she can hear is Booker’s breathing, she wonders if he’s always this still. Or if he feels his own sense of irrational nervousness right then.

“Hey Book?” she says quietly, tapping his shoulder. He’s warm and solid and still awake, when he sees the outline of his nodding. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything.”

“Would you have… would you have really left that family behind?”

“Hm? No.” He pulls himself up to his elbows. “The father, probably. But not the children.”

“Seriously, Booker?”

“Yes. No question about it. He should have volunteered to stay back with us himself, if only to give them the best chance.” He glances at her, then glues his eyes back to his half of the room.

“Do you think you can blame him for wanting to stay with his kids—” the words are out of Nile’s mouth before she can stop herself.

“I think we don’t always get to save everyone,” he mutters, a slight edge to his voice. “And we need to be prepared for when we can’t.”

Nile understands his meaning perfectly. “And you think I don’t know that.”

“No, I don’t.” Booker eases back into the pillow. “But learning it sooner doesn’t magically make it easier. So there’s no rush. By all means, Nile, take your time.”

_**cont...** _


	2. Chapter 2

In the passing days, Nile refuses to spend all her time cooped up inside. Blizzard or no, she can’t take it. It takes a lot of arguing but she convinces Booker to let her help with the shoveling. They trade off digging a path to the latrine since the washroom has no real running water without running the generator stuck to the eastern wall, which Booker absolutely forbids.

Without the local power, the water pump and heater attached to the cabin never runs. The need to conserve fuel is all Booker really holds out against when it comes to Nile. Otherwise, she’s used to winning him over and wearing out his resistance. 

However, Nile is less and less sure of venturing out when she comes across some kind of animal print that looks improbably large. She becomes a little convinced she needs to carry a gun while on her hikes despite Booker’s insistence not to. But that’s between her and the killer mountain bears.

“They’re completely docile, Nile. It’s not their fault that global warming through their seasons out of whack.”

“So you’ve never been eaten by a bear? Not once?”

Booker goes back to munching on his bowl of oatmeal. “No comment.”

*

Booker, the great hunter slash gatherer, continues to surprise Nile. Like in the stiflingly chilly morning she wakes up to him in all his unshaven glory gutting a fish on the countertop. Apparently the entirety of their backyard was a lake and they had failed to notice. And also Booker is a fisherman now? Just because he felt like rubbing that jack of all trades thing in her face.

“Should have noticed the dock posts before,” he tells her, wrist deep in fish guts. “I was halfway across before I realized I was walking on a lake. But it’s all frozen solid, perfectly safe.”

Nile stuck her tongue out. “Safe until the weight of your ego cracks the surface—”

“No matter, then. It would be fine. I’d flash freeze and then surface in the spring thaw. It’ll be like hibernation, peaceful, to be _sleeping with the fishes_.” His forced italian accent is horrible and somewhere Nicky is offended and doesn’t know why.

“Oh, you’re Luca Brasi now. You’ve actually seen the _Godfather_?”

“I feel like I’m up for swim now. Under the ice I’d be free of your petty arguments.”

“That’s not funny!”

“It’s a little funny.”

*

The real coldsnap hits not long after that and they do away with all pretenses. The fire can only do so much, and huddling for warmth is the only practical thing to do. They’re sharing their blankets now, instead of wrapping up in separate covers. Booker keeps her pressed tight to his chest. He’s the warmest thing she’s ever felt, laying in a room where she can see her own breath.

“Did I mention I’m sorry for dragging you into this?” she begs into the dark, half hoping he can’t hear her.

“You were saving lives, Nile.” His breath on her neck is heated and gentle. It makes her hair stand on end and gives her gooseflesh that she mostly blames on the cold.

They sleep fitfully against each other and at some point during the night she twists and turns until she rests halfway on top of him. She’s got her head wedged beneath his chin and an arm under his shirt. She’d never realized she was a heat seeking missile while unconscious but she’d clearly been trying to get under his skin.

Nile extricates herself from his body, face warm and embarrassed. She sneaks out to rinse down silently in the washroom and thinks just before she closes the bedroom door, that Booker’s snoring changes ever so imperceptibly, like a heart skipping a beat.

*

Nile is making Booker coffee, the same way she does every morning to feel useful because he does all the cooking, when she looks out the curtained window and realizes they have more to worry about than inclimate weather.

“Hey, Book! Where are the guns?”

She hears him grumble from the couch. “We’re not shooting any bears, Nile.”

“Cool. But what about the Mad Max looking dudes on the front lawn?”

“What?” Booker rises, alarmed. He has both their weapons out before he joins her at the front window. From a tactical position, he peers through the thick curtains to see what she sees; a long line of snow mobiles hurtling towards them, helmeted riders in mismatched body armor paradoxically placed over winter coats. And while Nile wishes she had recon binoculars, she’s sure those are rifles and what looks like a machete strapped to their backs.

The engines seem to stop all at once. Then they can hear the voices. “Come on out, Missy! We know you’re in there.”

Booker snatches Nile up at the elbow to stop her.

“Do not move.”

“Why not? Unless you think you’re the _Missy_ they’re asking for.”

“You’re not going out there to start a fight just because you’re bored in here.”

“I’m not the one starting anything!” she whisper-yells at the same time one of them threatens, “Come out or we’re breaking in!”

Booker pushes her towards the rickety little staircase that leads to the half landing and upper window. “Take position from the top level, I’ll meet them from the front.”

“Seriously?” she protests, “you should be the one at the concealed point. If they saw or tracked me out there, you’re still an unknown variable. They clearly think I’m here alone.”

“Yes, and I am going to go out there and make them regret whatever it is they came here to do.” His teeth are gritted and Nile’s never seen Booker enter any sort of conflict with so much tension. Not even into armed conflicts set up by his own betrayals and desperation. “Cover me,” Booker at last, readying by the door.

Nile moves swiftly up the stairs and kneels out of sight. Booker opens the door.

She can hear the confusion emanating from the yard. “Wait, where’s the chick—” one says to another, and “Mitchie, you said—”

“Gentlemen,” Booker begins, sounding more like himself and less like a man prone to mass murder, “might I suggest a retreat?”

The man taking the lead gives Booker a once over. “You’re a serviceman,” he concludes. His posture shifts to something slightly less on the offensive. Slightly.

Booker’s does not. “Once, before. Not anymore.”

“You know they say… you can never take off the uniform. Not in any way that counts.” He waits for some sign of camaraderie from Booker. He’ll be waiting a long time. “Me and my friends here, we’re looking for someone. A thief that’s been looting the lodge a few miles out.”

“Do you own the lodge?”

“No.”

“Do you require supplies?”

“Don’t worry about us, stranger,” one sneers. “We’re loaded for bear.”

“Then if you found this thief, what would you require of him?”

“Her,” one of them corrects. “Dark skinned girl. Not Indian though. No one’s ever seen her on this mountain before.”

“You’ve never seen me on this mountain, either,” Booker deadpans. A beat passes. And then another. Nile does not ease up on her grip. She could take out two cleanly, she’s sure of that. The rest would be up to Booker.

The big man with the ego steps closer to Booker. “You have her in there, don’t you?”

“I wouldn’t advise coming in to check.”

“Alright, listen brother, we’re good people, just trying to make it through the storm. But we’re here to make sure that people remember, the rule of law matters, even out in the wild. Otherwise, what separates us from the animals?”

“I’d argue the separation never existed.”

The mountain yokel seems well and truly thrown by Booker’s repudiation. Nile’s breath hitches with half laughter, half pride. That man’s endless nihilism had its uses.

If at all possible, roughneck seems to dial up the condescending as he retreats back to his vehicle. “Me and mine have the lodge locked down. We’ll be using it as our _headquarters_ from here on out. You and yours keep your distance. If we find anything more was taken, we’ll have to take action. And you understand what I mean by that, don’t you?”

“I have some idea.”

“Well then, that’s all we came here to say.”

Booker seems to believe that about as much as Nile does. “Your warning’s been received. Feel free to head back down the mountain.”

And with little else to do, they retreat.

*

Booker is agitated when he returns. Coming down the stairs, Nile thinks he’s overdoing it. Really, he should relax. It was a job well done.

“They'll be back.”

“Like in a _Terminator 2_ kind of way?”

Booker scrubs at his face, ignoring her excellent taste in movie references. “They’re going to realize too late what a bad idea that lodge is.” 

“Can we help them?”

Booker looks at her in a way that makes her feel she’s grown an extra limb. “After all that? Why the hell would we?”

“Because we can’t die and they can?”

“This? Again?” he asks her, like the very idea is preposterous. He almost says something, but stops himself. He crosses the room and grabs an empty duffel they keep on hand.

“Where are you going?”

“On a raid. I think I’ve seen the place where they were holed up before they abandoned their shelter. If I’m right, they probably left something useful behind.”

“What? Why? What makes you so sure of that?”

“The look of them, Nile. That kind of confidence, that kind of gall, it only comes from one place—”

“Inexperience?”

“Exactly. They’re playing at survivalism. It’s a game to them. They don’t want help, they want to feel like they’ve won. None of them have probably struggled enough to know the real consequence. Surviving is what you do when all your choices are taken away. Not what you do when you throw those choices away. Honestly, you Americans and your movies, too much television.”

“This is Canada, Book.”

“My point stands. All that garbage does is make people think they’re the ones who live to the end of the apocalypse. Everyone thinks they’re the hero.”

“As opposed to you, who thinks no one is.”

Booker zips up tight. “I’ve met a hero or two. They tend to die a lot, though.”

Nile slips on her boots, deciding she’s not done with excitement for the day. “You should stay here—” he insists but Nile’s already out the door, leading the charge.

*

Booker should be used to losing arguments by now. It’s nice to go on a run together, to breathe together in open air, even if it is through a neck gaither. 

The hidey-hole they find is a cluttered mess, filled with discarded garbage and billowing snow. The structure wasn’t fortified enough to withstand snow weight. Booker digs in, tossing and throwing items as he pleases and Nile has to raise an eyebrow at his scavenging antics.

“One man’s trash, I guess,” she mutters to herself. All she sees is empty ammo boxes. But in the corner she sees a toolbox. She drags it over to Booker, who looks at it likes he’s struck gold.

“So who do you think these guys are?”

“The real question might be, who do these guys think they are?” Booker holds up a hammer in one hand and a wrench in the other, looking triumphant. “If I had to guess, they’re miners. Not local or raised in the area. But familiar enough with the land to think they can outlast the storm.”

“Why not join the evac?”

“Hubris, most likely. There’s nothing to be gained by staying here. Even less to gain by harassing strangers and staking territories that won’t matter once the roads are cleared.”

“Playing king of the mountain?”

“Something like that.”

“Do you get a lot of these types in disasters?” Nile asks, wandering deeper in the den. She figures she’s never stuck around long enough in the aftermath to see what kind of psychosis crops up in mortals. 

Booker is answering her question, something about lunatics guarding department stores during hurricanes when she chances upon a secluded room. She sees him, chained to a radiator.

He whimpers.

“Book! do you have bolt cutters?”

“Uh…” she hears him digging around, metal scratching metal. “Right here!”

“Good! I need it! Now!”

Booker rushes over to here, and Nile snatches the tool from his hand. She makes quick work of the rusted chain and leans down to scoop up the wounded ball of fur staring up at her. But Booker is faster, realizing what she’s doing and spins her behind him.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s a puppy, Booker.”

“Hungry animal. A beaten dog if I had to guess. It could be dangerous!”

“I cut him loose and he’s not even moving!”

Booker opens his mouth but Nile is not hearing it.

“We’re not leaving him here! He’s starving! And he’s not a wild animal. He won’t survive by himself. The last time a puppy like him had anything in common with a wolf, Andy was still young!”

The quiet little canine tucks his head under his paws and whines.

Booker sighs. “Not so loud, Nile. Yelling probably hasn’t led to good things in his experience.”

Nile tries to step around Booker to get to him, but Booker continues to block her. “Let me do it. You’d be surprised how quickly a dog can revert to it’s wild nature.”

“I don’t care how many packs of wild dogs have tried to eat you, Book. He’s coming with us. And… how about, he’ll only be eating my rations. Sound fair?”

“No, he won’t be.”

The dog sniffs Booker’s hand. He laps at it with his tongue. He’s clearly trusting, and friendly.

“See. He likes you.”

“No,” Booker denies. “He knows he has no choice. But any port in a storm, right, boy?

**_cont..._ **


	3. Chapter 3

Booker refuses to help Nile name their rescue puppy, because Booker is too serious and hopeless and heartless apparently. Honestly, how he holds out against that long snout and little wet nose is beyond her. Nile expects it’s more of his usual hot and cold act. If it can even be called an act. There is always a grain of truth somewhere underneath his un-understandable changeability. She’s just not sure which part of it to trust. But when she starts calling the recovering pup Napoleon, its mostly to fuck with him and also because the dog yaps happily whenever he hears the name, quickly realizing it’s his.

“No! Absolutely not!” he objects for hours on end to no avail.

She claps him on the shoulder with her utmost sympathies. “You should have jumped on the doggie naming train when you had the chance.” And Booker doesn’t speak to her for a whole day but it’s worth it. She has Napoleon Bone-A-Parte now. What does she need him for?

But what Booker spends his time grousing about is one thing. What he does is another. And Nile knows she can always trust his actions. Because what he’s done and what he does is carry the poor pup the whole way home. He sets it down gently by the fire he rekindles, like he did with Nile herself the first night he arrives. He stuffs a sack with some old clothing they are not using and leaves it by the wood stove for a bed. He even cuts a portion of meat to leave in his dog bowl once a day. And Nile knew Booker could be patient, could be gentle, and thoughtful. She’d been on the receiving end of it for days now. It’s just another thing to see it pour out of him onto someone or something else. Booker does a lot for her. There is no denying that. But maybe he does too much. It makes her think and rethink Merrick Pharmaceuticals. How she most met Booker at a time when he was the least himself. The worst possible version of himself. A shadow of self destruction pulled tight around him.

She doesn’t see that shadow now. There are glimpses, but he’s clearer, brighter when he’s watching over her or tending to the damn dog he refuses to name. He’s a man who can’t stand sitting around, being idle with his hands. He’s a doer, a caretaker, and Nile gets that. She hates it too. Because all this was her own idea. Because Booker refused to even think about leaving her.

He’s grumbling in the corner, scratching at his thickening beard when she gets an idea.

*

“Why do you have a straight razor?” he asks cautiously, when she beckons him forward with the knife.

“Sit!” she taps on the stool she dragged into the bathroom. And he does so, even while he eyes her suspiciously. He clearly still thinks a murderous bout of cabin fever is on the rise.

“Do you even know what you’re doing with that?”

She pulls out a mug filled with shaving cream and a soft bristle brush. One of his belts she used as a leather strap.

“Where did you find that?”

“One of the houses we skimmed over had this shaving kit. Didn’t think to grab it at first, but now that I’m living with a real lumberjack, I think we should do something about that beard before it gains sentience.”

“And what if I like my beard?:

“You used to shave at least once a week, Book.”

“And you know this how?”

“I have eyes, don’t I?”

“Didn’t know you were paying attention.”

“Have more faith in me and my skills of observation.”

“I would, if i was confident you even know what you’re doing.”

“I’m not going to slit your throat,” she swears, lathering his skin. “See, in Chicago, there was a little barbershop called the Dapper Fade and Blade. It was the spot when I was a kid. All the guys on the block wanted their hair cut there, and all the girls knew Bianca worked the salon upstairs. Nobody could braid like her. And when my mom was, when she was checked out, Bianca did my hair. Taught me how to braid and wash and sew. It wasn’t long before I was learning how to use the electric razors. And there was this one guy who came into the shop, always wearing his uniform. Think he was a guardsman. who knew my father, maybe in passing. And he always requested the old fashioned shave. And that’s how i learned to do this…”

Angling his head back, she lets the weight of the blade do all the work. Clean passes over the skin, rinsing in the basin.

When she’s done, Booker looks more like himself. “See. not even a nick.”

It isn’t often Booker is the one staring up at her. He’s too tall, and he’s never sitting or still. And they’re always close in this predicament, practically living on top of each other. But Nile can inspect him from this height and she feels sees something new.

“Don't move, I’ll get the hot towel.”

He runs a hand over his cheek and down his throat. “Its fine, you don’t need to.”

“It’s not an old fashioned without it.”

Booker acquiesces, and Nile pats the towel against his skin. It’s a perfect shave if she did say so herself. No stray whiskers anywhere.

“So I couldn’t find any aftershave, but we do have that first aid kit. Where I found witch hazel which I watered it down, so don’t worry.”

She runs the mixture over her hands and pats it against Booker’s face and neck. His eyes are so blue he watches her. She swears she can feel his pulse through her palms.

“Thank you, Nile. This was… this was nice.”

“Anytime.”

She tries to smile but she feels shy so suddenly she its a relief when he offers to clean up for her and ushers her out of the bathroom. She glances back once, seeing him lean over in front of the slim wall mounted glass. He’s got both hands braced to the counter and a trackless look she can’t fathom. He keeps standing there, waiting for something to pass, before he bows his shaking head and Nile realizes she’s trespassing. Turning away, she feel’s young and foolish. He clearly had been humoring her. She really should have noticed.

*

Nile leaves him be for a while after that. She focuses her attentions on Napoleon, whose emotions are never confusing or mistakable. He laps at Nile’s love and chases after her when she dare stop petting him. He sits on her feet when she plunks down in the couch. His life’s mission seems to be covering her in doggie hair, and he accomplishes it with aplomb. She figures it’s not fair to ask any more of Booker. So she is the one who fills his bowl with snow melt and lets the dog out three times a day. Nearly a week in, she hears the roar of a passing engine too late to react. A snowmobile sails past on the lake along side the road. Napoleon starts growling, barking, yapping. All spit and courage he didn’t have when she first found half dead. He’s very intent, making his presence known and the snowmobile guns its engine and the rider sails past, hollering something Nile can’t make out.

*

She tells Booker about it, because chances are they’ll be hearing from those snow sledding cowboys again. “He had to have recognized Napoleon. He’ll report back and they’ll definitely know we went snooping.” Booker groans, regarding the overeager pup with tired eyes. “It’s not his fault. He was being protective. And I know this is the part where you tell me that taking him was a bad idea—”

Booker rubs Napoleon’s half stuck up ears. “Who can blame him for thinking he’s a guard dog?”

Nile relaxes. “But do you think they’ll be back? Put us on the defensive?”

“That all depends on how stupid or desperate they are. Whether it’s a matter of ego or morale.”

“Meaning?”

“Think like the enemy, Nile. By now they have to be hurting. We came into this prepared ourselves, and we’re running plenty low on food and options. And there’s less of us to begin with.”

“Well, I did think about stabbing you over the last jar of peanut butter this morning.”

“I’m being serious,” he insists. Like he’s actually worried she doesn’t get the gravity of their dire straits.

“I know, I know. So maybe they might think we have something here worth taking. We could talk them out of it, so at least we don’t have to kill them.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. It could just be more advantageous to turn on us instead of each other. Seen it plenty of times. Guerrilla warfare, without enough supplies. An unprepared infantry at each others throats. Then the leader takes control by pointing to a new outlet for that rage. Sometimes the only thing keeping people together is a common enemy.”

“And we’re the best target if they’re struggling. But, stupid or not, evil or not… They’re still civilians. And you promised me no one dies on the mountain.”

Booker shakes his head. “No, I said we wouldn’t die. And I meant it.”

“Book—”

“You know what men such as them are like.” And he was right. They had all the makings of a wannabe racist militia. But Nile still didn’t want to kill anybody. “They speak in violence and force and posturing. Not reason. And if they had found you up here alone like they’d been planning—”

She doesn’t let him finish the thought. “I can handle myself, Book.”

“I know ,” He seethes. “But you shouldn’t have to.”

So I will do this for you , goes unspoken.

“I don’t know what you’re so worried about,” Nile lies, light and soothing. “What could possibly happen to me while I have the world’s best military conqueror right here. Isn’t that right, Emperor Bone-A-Parte? Isn’t that right? Who’s the best little conqueror?”

Booker walks away from her, throwing his hands in the air, exclaiming something about the fall of France and bloody revolutions.

*

They come at sunset. Napoleon hears them before they do. Booker’s been waiting, guns at the ready. “Stay here, don’t move.”

Nile rolls her eyes. She’s literally marched into battle against well trained and better armed mercenaries. Yet here he goes again with the kid gloves.

“Wait here and do what? Wait for a signal?”

“There will be no signal. I’ll be back in five minutes.” Booker doesn’t make it out the door before Nile grabs him.

“Stop trying to be a hero, Book. It doesn’t suit you.”

“I’m not trying!”

“I’m coming with you, so just get over it.

Locked and loaded, they meet them halfway, standing over the frozen lake. Nile figures the danger here exists to all parties, should anyone get too reckless too soon. It is level playing ground. So long as everybody stays smart.

But of course, they still don’t know what this band of wannabe survivors actually wants. They’ve wasted a lot of fuel riding here and presumably riding back. This time they’re carrying weapons, handguns, and one automatic.

“We warned you to stay away from what was ours,” starts the leader. He’s a loud little blowhard. His followers nod but the agreement doesn’t reach their eyes. Nile thinks perhaps maybe they don’t know what they want either.

They certainly look thinner since the last she saw them.

The flak-jacketed leader is brandishing his weapon, finger proudly on the trigger. Nile knows its got Booker on edge. All one of them has to do is see too much of one regeneration. Then it’s lights out for everybody.

“Put that away before you hurt yourself,” Booker warns and a shot rings out, the head honcho survivalist pointing his pistol in the air.

And now Nile is bored. She’s seen scarier shot callers in the south end of Chicago when she was twelve. She steps forward.

“Are you going to tell us what you’re here for or are we gonna stand around all day freezing to death?”

Booker barely, barely, contains a laugh by her side.

“We warned you—”

Nile rolls her eyes. “No one has gone near that lodge of yours.”

“Then explain the dog!”

“He wasn’t in the lodge. He was chained up and left for dead.” Nile steps closer. “And if you were willing to do that, then I really doubt you’re willing to stage an entire standoff over getting him back. So I ask again; why are you here? What do you hope to accomplish?”

She’s met with silence.

“Fine. Maybe you came all this way to hear about why we’re here. See, me and my — ” she glances back at Booker “ — partner, we were working with the evac personnel. We were moving people, families, laborers, locals. We probably shuttled people you know, friends of yours, up to the planes and out of the storm’s path. Not sure if you heard, but there was an evacuation order. It was mandatory, wasn’t it, Book?”

“It certainly was.”

“So, my partner and I only stayed back because the last flight out had too many people aboard. But I remember all the planes that took off before that. There were still dozens of empty seats left in some of them. Seats you could have taken. But you didn’t. You all chose to stay. So I have to wonder who’s bright idea was that?”

There is a rumble of murmuring between the other men. Their leader, the most obviously irate, is stone quiet.

“Who would choose to ignore the chance for safety and warmth and provisions? Who would convince other people to go along with him and some dangerous scheme? Who’d be narcissistic enough to promise it would be fun to play cowboy on a dead mountain.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about—”

Nile knows when she has a man on the ropes. She continues.

“My partner here. He is a pessimist. He believes that it doesn’t take much to turn good men into bad ones. Sometimes all it takes is one charismatic, but ill-intentioned leader. To control men who are hungry and desperate, who don’t realize they’re being forced to attack and unite against an enemy who’s done nothing to them. All so they don’t stop long enough to think for themselves.”

The ringleader steps forward but Booker raises his gun. Nile finishes saying her piece.

“But you see, I have a different outlook. Less fatal, more optimistic. I believe good men can know when to walk away even after they’ve made mistakes. That they can know when a man isn’t worth their loyalty.”

“You done?” asked the leader, looking unimpressed.

“I don’t know, are you?” she returns, just as the first of his men revs his engine and speeds away back in the direction he came from. He skids over the ice and snow, growing smaller in the distance. He is quickly followed by two others who also depart without a word. Then another, and another, and then all.

Soon, it’s just old camo jacket standing opposite of her and Booker, looking deserted and wild-eyed. It’s not everyday Nile obliterates some narcissist alpha male with just a few words. She’s feeling pretty damn proud of herself. The pride is dampened when Booker steps forward, telling her, “Go back up to the cabin, Nile.”

“What? No. Did you not see what I just did?” Diffusing an entire armed standoff with only her words is nothing to shake a stick at. “It’s just us against him now.”

“Nile…” he warns her again, looking paranoid. “You’ve done enough. Go.” He shifts slightly over to her, readying to say something else but the gunfire is louder. A spray of bullets shot off in her direction. Absent-minded, she feels her body up and down and realizes she hasn’t been hit. But there are three perfectly round holes in the snow and ice at her feet.

“Really?” she asks him. “That’s the best you got?”

Later, she would realize that cracking ice doesn’t sound like cracking ice. Not at first. It is the smallest fissures that are heard, the movement of trapped air, faint popping reverberations that sound more like science fiction that nature—

“Nile, move!”

Then all she hears is shattered glass.

*

Underneath, it doesn’t feel like dying. She merely floats in the blankness. She sees faces. Her mother. The man who first killed her. Jay and Dizzy. Her brother, Hakim, who from all their pictures looks so much like their father. Or is her father, younger, taking shape in memory? Everything is heavy and dark when they turn away from her. She screams.

_**cont.** _


	4. Chapter 4

She comes up alive, but barely. 

Somehow it’s even colder out of the water. The world is numbing around the edges. Nile can only see straight ahead, she can’t crane her neck in any direction. The only part of her body she is able to move is her chest, gasping and gagging for air. The air feels like icicles inside her lungs. She hadn’t known she could be this cold inside. She didn’t know her skin could turn this color. Miles and miles away there is a roaring sound. A small repeated explosion. A wet plunk. She is distantly aware of her body moving. She’s being heaved upwards, pulled close to a wall of warmth. Booker.

“ — hold on, I’m going to get you inside — ”

His voice is quieter than it feels. He’s yelling but none of it registers. He’s on a different side of glass, in an inverted space where everything isn’t a slow dying hush of dull thudding heartbeats. Nile realizes they’re inside when the view changes from the open sky to the slanted cabin roof. He is turning her around in his arms and placing her to the ground. She knows it’s all so gentle, no matter that she can’t feel it. With more delicate touches he tilts up her chin so she can see him. His dark eyes, the rugged worn lines of his face, and his mouth again. He’s speaking to her. Slow firm words, thick and rough with fear. 

“—you can’t get warm like this… I’m sorry… I need to take these off of you—”

He lifts her arms and yanks off a layer of cold. The over shirt she was wearing is tossed aside. It is followed by the dripping tank top plastered to her skin. In a flurry of color and movement Booker swaddles her in the quilt they’ve kept folded on the couch. Its softness wrapped over her is the first sensation that cuts through the anesthetized cold. Next come the pins and needles.

“Ow,” she squeaks as Booker yanks off one of her boots, sock and all.

“You can feel that?” he asks, and when she nods and he takes the other off slower. “That’s a good sign. Get closer to the fire, Nile. Rub your hands together.”

“I think I can hear you too,” she says distantly, trying to flex her fingers on command. She feels water run down the side of her face, ice water clearing from her eardrums. 

“You couldn’t before?” His eyes dart over her, concerned. 

“No. You were far away.” She grabs Booker’s sleeve. She doesn’t want him to drift away from her again. She likes him close. There’s a sharp pitch ring fading in and out of her brain, but his heavy tones cancel it out. “Sounded underwater.”

“Only one of us went into the ice,” he reminds her. Nile thinks she hears something else over the crackle of the fire. A wet, bodily snap of cartilage. She can see Booker’s shoulders evening out as he grips her waistband with both hands. He winces as he lifts her hips and maneuvers both legs free. 

“You got hurt,” she realizes.

“What? No.” He moves her around, keeping her covered and modest in the quilt. “It popped out of the socket when I pulled you out of the lake.”

“But you carried me all the way up here—”

“I would have done it with one arm if I had to.”

“But—”

“It’s not important. Nile, focus. You went into freezing waters, not me. Immortality can’t heal that. It’s not a wound, not an injury. The body just has to get warm. So you’re gonna have to feel it, okay? The pain, that’s coming. And the first thing you’re gonna feel is stabbing, overactive nerves.”

“Already feel it.”

“Good. Next, is the burn. Everywhere, deep in the tissues, like hell under your skin. It will feel like you’re on fire. And you might think you don’t need to stay by the hearth. But that thought will be wrong. It’s all in your mind, and the fire is the only warmth that’s real. Stay close to it. Do you understand?”

“Stay close to the fire,” she repeats.

He clambers around to get behind her where he tightens the blanket around her. “I’m going to put my arms around you, until you tell me to stop.” But that does not make sense to Nile. Why would she tell him to stop?

She lurches forward and he squeezes her tighter through the blankets. The pain is everywhere now, not some far off thing passing her by. She shakes and shivers. Her teeth clatter in her mouth and she thinks they might fall out of her head.

“It’s alright,” he soothes. “You’re gonna be okay.”

“Of course I am.” She had him, didn’t she? He was on her six, her right hand, ever present and poking holes in her plans. He made her better. He was always making her better. She would never be afraid of a little pain if he could talk her through it, steady and calm. “Don’t look so scared, Book. I’ll be fine.”

Booker’s face burns. He fumbles over his own words and that calm she depends on wavers into vexation. He does this too, more and more often. She can’t help but notice it now that its just the two of them. The sudden impatience, the shorter fuse. How hurt he looks when he tilts down to berate her “You didn’t listen! I told you it wasn’t safe, and now you’re—” 

“Why are you so mad at me, Book?”

“I’m not!”

“Yes, you are,” she shivers. “You’re mad at me all the time. Like everything I do is wrong. Like you can’t figure out if you hate me.”

“I don't hate you.” Booker stares into the fire and doesn’t answer her question.

“But you do. You hate when I try to help, or talk about coming back.” She’s a little less jittery, making it easier to speak. Which is good, because she needs to say this. She needs an answer. “You’re mad all the time that I have faith that we’ll come back, if we need to.”

His teeth are gritted. “You rely on it too much.”

“But talking about it isn’t going to make it disappear. Unless you think it’s all for some big cosmic lesson I’ll be too dead to learn? The universe getting the last laugh?”

“I promise you, you’re not the one the universe is fucking with.”

Nile laughs once but the sound is cut off. Her whole body seizes. She can’t stop shaking.

“No, no, no,” he says a thousand times. Booker’s voice fades, but his panic stays close. Her name echoes as he calls after her. The black that greets her is the coldest thing yet.

*

Nile gasps awake. She feels—

She feels fine. She’s propped on a stack of couch cushions lined beneath her. Her clothes are wet and folded beside her and her socks hanging above the fireplace. Booker is the only thing missing. He’d been holding her while she died.

“You’re awake.” Booker is standing away from her, holding one of those novelty mugs. This one reads: THE TEARS OF MY ENEMIES. Its contents taste less like saline and more like instant coffee straight from the pouch.

Nile gulps down the entire thing before asking, “what happened?”

“You went into shock.”

Nile looks around, confused. “I was fine. I was feeling better.”

“That’s how it happens. Submerging in that much cold for that long, the blood vessels constrict, your pressure drops off and the heart overtaxes itself trying to compensate. Then your organs shut down and—”

“—And everything snowballs from there.” She smiles weakly, but Booker won’t look at her. “What? Not even gonna laugh at my pun? We’re immortal Book, lighten up.”

He takes the mug from her and turns his back. “Get dressed, Nile. Get warm.”

“I am warm,” she points out. Dying had reinvigorated her, the same way it always did. The way limbs regrow, lungs inflate with air, all conditions pertinent to health manifest right back to basics. “Perfectly warm, actually.”

“Yes, of course,” Booker scoffs. 

He’s striding off towards the kitchen out of the bedroom but Nile stops him. Starting to feet, bracing the blanket to her body that stops midway down her thigh, she shouts. “If you have something to say, say it!”

“What does it matter? You’ll ignore it like everything else.”

“Maybe if you could do something other than talk down at me for a single minute—”

“A minute ago you were a corpse on the fucking floor!” He rips back around to her, roaring and hoarse like she’snever heard him before.

“That could have just as easily been you!”

“Oh, if only!”

“What the hell does that even mean?” White hot anger bubbles to the surface. An irritation that’s been building for a while. The way he sidesteps her and countermands her. The way he lets her feel like she has a say only in so far as she takes none of the risk. Like she’s some sort of liability he can’t account for. Like he has to work around her, not with her. “Why do you act like I can’t handle what the rest of you can?”

“It has never been about what you can handle, it’s what you _choose_ to take on. What you refuse to walk away from! When are you going to start caring about what happens to you?”

“That’s rich coming from the guy with a death wish!”

“Better suicidal than wrapped up in delusions of martyrdom.”

It’s low and it’s dirty from the both of them. And Nile regrets it. But at the same time she doesn’t. He doesn’t make sense. “Some of us actually care about the lives we could save. I don’t know how you don’t, but I do.”

“How perfectly noble of you,” he scoffs. “If only you could find the strength to care about one more life. Just one, Nile!”

“Why don’t you just say what you mean! Tell me what you fucking want!” She’s just so sick of it. More tired than she even knew. Trying to gauge what about her was upsetting him, keeping him at a distance. She’s tired of feeling like she’s failed at something.

“What I want is to know when are you going to stop offering up your seat in a blizzard.” He steps closer. Nile can see his five o’clock shadow, the darkened worry lines etched in his face. “When you’re going to stop lying about how much water is left in your canteen.”

Nile steps back. She’d done that _once_.

“Or offering yourself up as bait to every craven monster we have to run a con on!”

Okay. That she had done more than once. “That’s what you’re angry about? That!?”

He manages to walk away, before swinging back around on her. “That’s not even half of it!”

“Tell me what you really think of me then. Which is it, Book? Naive? Stupid? Reckless?”

“Infuriating. You’re fucking infuriating. Two hundred godforsaken years on this intolerable planet and you, you! are the single most trying thing I have ever encountered. Worse than a Russian winter. Worse than a hundred years of exile. Because you never stop, you never quit, you never think about the consequences to yourself. And you just don’t fucking care about who has to watch what you do to yourself.”

He’s towering over her and Nile isn’t remotely scared of him. He’s too defensive, too raw. Looking ready to run or collapse right in front of her.

He takes her by the shoulders. “What is it going to take to make you stop, Nile? What do I have to do for just a little peace? Because I can’t keep watching you do this, over and over.”

“So don’t watch, Book…” Even saying it feels wrong in Nile’s gut. He’d always been close, more faithful and present than her own left arm. But she’s too angry to stop. “You don’t have to look. You don’t have to care… I never asked you to…”

He laughs, broken and sharp. “If I could stop, I would.”

Bringing his hands to her face, his fingers frame her jaw and her cheekbones with a touch so guttingly tender that he undoes himself right in front of her. She sees right through him, into the aching weakness he’s managed to hide. She wonders _how long?_ To which he answers _too long,_ with only his eyes. And fuck.

 _Fuck_.

There’s no telling which of them moves first. Nile wants to believe it’s her, to lean into that audacity that the others claim they see in her so well. That nothing, not even this could scare her. But Booker is a damn broken open, all splintered edges and rushing, flooding emotion. Their lips meet and the world spins away. The blanket is flush against her body, the only thing between her and Booker.

The bed is right behind them. There is no forethought that leads them there. Just desperate, automatic movements as he kisses her. Long and loud and lingering. Her bottom lip between his teeth, his pulse under her tongue.

On the bed, he lays over her. Her still dripping hair soaks the pillow beneath her but she can’t care. The blanket between her bared body and his clothing rucks up between her legs. More accidental than purposeful but she bolts up, feeling the friction and heft of him on top of her and she moans—

Napoleon starts barking for attention from the doorway.

Booker startles, and so does she, their mouths separating long enough for both of them to get a decent gasp of air and a real grasp of just what in the hell they are doing.

Booker rises to his elbows, pulling off her. “I… I’m sorry.”

Nile isn’t sure whether to stage her own retreat or pull him back onto her. “Book…”

“We shouldn’t… I let my, my head get away from me.” He clambers off the bed, faster than if it were on fire.

Nile hides her face in her hands. “Your head, huh?”

“Yes. A little stir crazy… It— it happens.”

Nile sits up, pulling the blanket closer around the curve of her body. “Booker, wait. Let’s just— ”

“Non. Leave it. You get dressed. And I will— I will go—” He never tells her what he is planning on doing. Can’t settle on an excuse to get away from her fast enough. But he disappears from the door way and Napoleon pads after him and Nile collapses onto the bedding and fills up with a single, solitary emotion.

“Fuck.”

*

To say they fouled this one up is an understatement. Booker won’t even acknowledge her when she steps out of the bedroom. Their bedroom, the one they’ve shared for weeks now. Sleeping besides each other every night. Most mornings with her waking up under him or her legs twisted around him and him saying nothing of it. Because apparently Booker doesn’t tell her anything important. Every argument takes new shape, like a shadow puppet on the wall cast by twisting fingers she can’t see; i _t’s not a bird, its a train! It’s not a butterfly, it’s an obvious broken heart!_ All their bickering is colored with it. His insistence that she alone get on the plane. His need to give up the bed. His outrage over the deaths she didn’t tell him about. His uncharacteristic panic anytime the mountaineering yahoos dared come after them.

It feels like hours later when Nile slinks into the main room of the cabin. She’s fully dressed, her hair dry, and Booker is trying to look busy, trying to look less obviously aware of her presence. Napoleon is mewling softly at his feet, hopelessly confused by his two humans. “So we’re not going to talk about it?” she asks the back of his head after a moment too many passes.

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Except there is,” she creeps closer. “There’s a hell of a lot more to say. Because I think you have a whole stockpile of things to say to me, but you don’t. Because we haven’t been having the same conversation in… in I don’t know how long.”

“Let this go, Nile,” pleads the haunch of his shoulders, the tight span of his back.

“How do you expect me to do that after what we just—?” She moves around him, figuring that imploring him to be reasonable will get her nowhere. They are so far from reason here. “Just stop, Book. Stop running, stop deflecting. Say something honest for once.”

He looks her over with a hard, burning stare. “You want honesty?”

“Always.”

“You think that, don’t you. That really want to know?” His laughter is so bitter that it makes Nile nervous. “You want to know that when you’re hurt, or dying, or dead right in front of me, that everything I don’t say cuts right through me. That I’m left choking on it even after you’re breathing again. That I can’t stand it. Not a bit of it. That sometimes I can’t even stay in the same room as you because I won’t be able to stop myself.”

“So don’t. Just say it, Book.”

He rubs his palms into his sockets, hiding his red eyes.

“I’m right here,” she begs. “You can tell me.”

“It can’t be taken back.”

Nile wants to argue that they’re well past that. They stepped in it already, they felt it already. Felt what only seemed to be the surface of something deeper. Hell, he’d been on top of her while she was wearing nothing but a blanket. But now he’s the one standing here like he was laid bare. Like there is only so much he can do to preserve the rest of him. Napoleon begins to paw at the front door and Nile lets him out. Booker returns to looking for something to do that keeps from standing anywhere close to Nile. He fixes more coffee, prepares more food, and radiates flight risk energy. If she says anything more, she knows he’ll bolt. Maybe he’ll even throw himself into the still icing over hole in the lake.

Remembering the burning cold, Nile lets him have this brief respite.

*

She’s not surprised when he doesn’t turn up in their bed for the night. She pretends to sleep for the longest, hoping he;ll try to shake her awake. But Booker never comes to bed. Not even when she thinks she hears his footsteps linger at the doorway, once, twice, but they always shuffle off. Nile isn’t usually this much of a coward. She never waits on things to happen. She goes out and makes it what she needs. She should have chased after him, wrung the truth out of him immediately. Nile only wonders how she can do that when she feels so uncertain of her own truth. She turns over in bed. Thinks to herself, how much of her immortality is molded around the shape of him? She’d learned to ride motorbikes because of him. Practiced a whole other dialect of French. Learned to cheat at cards. How to diffuse a hostage situation without getting slashed across the neck. She alone was the reason Booker was even here, not pigeonholed away for the next century. She fought for him. She brought the others around on trusting him again.

Nile kicks off the covers. If Booker wanted to do this the hard way, then so be it. She’d beaten him before. In her bare feet she tiptoes out into the darkened cabin. She hears Napoleon sleeping under the wood stove, curled up in his little sack bed. But otherwise the cabin is empty.

Booker is gone.

**_cont._ **


	5. Chapter 5

She thinks of several ways to murder him, or at least threaten to murder him, because how dare he bail on her now. But underneath the anger, the only thing she’s really feeling is fear. As much progress as Booker has made, as brilliant as that mind of his could be, he was forever a man always on the brink of doing something incomprehensibly stupid. Like wandering out into the snow, leaving a track of prints leading to the truck they parked by the lake and left buried in a building snow drift. There’s no light coming from inside but she knows he’s in there by the wedged up snow from where the door was forced open. It takes some work getting the passenger door open and shimming inside. She feels ridiculous and when they are done arguing about important, terrifying, life altering revelations, she will make him pay for it.

“Go back inside,” he tells her. His face is red and frostbitten. Words soaked in alcohol nursed from a bottle she’s never seen before.

“Booker…” she growls. She adds squirreling away alcohol without the offer to share to her list of ‘not as pressing but still pissed off’ items.

“Just go, Nile. I haven’t much dignity left, but grant me this much grace. Please.”

“You can’t be out here drinking like this. Look at your fingers.” He must have used an ungloved hand to dig through the ice and snow. His skin all over is black down to the nail beds.

“Don’t look so worried, Nile,” he echos. He waves his hands at her. Each finger turns pink and flush, but still cold. “I’ll be fine. See?”

She purses her mouth. “Are you trying to punish me?”

“I would never,” Booker laughs. “What are the chances that it would even work?” Nile doesn't want to answer that. She makes a grab for the bottle, but even drunk, he’s too fast. “Just stop. And don’t look at me like that, Nile. Don’t,” he begs.

“Like what?” she demands.

“Like I’m so disappointing. You weren’t supposed to know. Not ever. Not until I put it behind me… or… if I couldn’t do that then never at all. Because you weren’t supposed to be here.”

She keeps telling herself that. “I'm sorry I didn’t strap you into that plane myself.”

“I'm not talking about here on this mountain. I mean, now, ever since Merrick. Since the night beside the fire in the cave. You weren’t supposed to be one of us… I wasn’t supposed to dream of you. I was supposed to be the last. I was supposed to finish it.”

Nile nods, pain stinging at her throat. He regrets her ever joining their family. “Right. So, I was just supposed to die in Afghanistan and stay dead.”

The truck is suddenly too small. She needs air.

“No!” he pulls her back. “That is not what I mean!”

“You sure, because you make it sound like you'd be so much better off if they left me in the dirt. Am I really that bad?” she asks, when what she means is, is it truly that unbearable, feeling any way about her?

“ _Non_!”

“Then what is it? Is it that hard to talk to me?”

“Living long is hard enough. I'd failed at it long before you.” He’s whisper soft when he admits it. Less fear and self hate, more grief and resignation as he grips the bottle tight. Tight enough that Nile wonders if it might shatter. “But now… now, you're going to make it that much harder. You're going to make forever into something impossible.”

She doesn’t know how to respond to that. To all the truth that eeks out of him, out of a pain she had no idea she inspired in him. Eyes stinging, she lets him disappear deeper into the bottle because she doesn’t know how to stop this. Thinks how its so pointlessly ironic, that she had all the words she needed to save an enemy she didn’t want to fight, but none to save someone she loved. She could drag him out of here. Force him back into the warmth of the cabin. But she doesn’t want that.

“Come inside with me.”

He ignores her. Keeps staring out the blank windshield.

She tries again. “Come inside, please.”

He doesn’t budge.

“We can go inside, or we can stay out here. Either way we’re doing it together. But since we both know freezing to death is your least favorite way to die, I’m hoping that you’ll just… that you’ll listen to me. That you won’t make me sit here and watch it happen to you. Because you know how cruel that is to do to someone who—”

The look he gives her is wretched. He slams a fist down on the steering wheel and silently, slowly, pushes open the door and steps out into the night.

*

When he collapses on the couch, the beat up old thing threatens to give way under the sheer weight of his misery. Nile is filling a mug with water from a gallon jug. She doesn’t get the chance to read the bunched up print on the side of it until Booker obediently tips the rim to his mouth: WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU MAKES YOUR DRINKS STRONGER. He downs it and she refills it, twice. While he’s distracted, she snatches away his bottle he’s set on the floor. Holding the half full bottle, she thinks about joining him on the couch, where he’s kicking off his boots. But when she’s closer, standing over him like she had the day she shaved his face with the old fashioned razor, she feels a well of courage. That maybe from this vantage she can keep him still long enough for something to happen.

Crossing her arms, she swallows hard. “You know, Book, when you’re not drunk or spiraling, or icing me out, you’re kind of my favorite person to talk to. I think you have been for a while now. That’s why it sucks so much when you shut down on me, when you don’t want to be around me, or talk to me. And that probably should have been a clue that… that, I don’t know, that maybe you’re right. Maybe if I stopped long enough, stopped throwing myself at every problem, if I paid more attention to myself I’d know what I need to say here.”

Or know how to begin to stay it, to be more in touch with her own feelings, with the things laid out in plain sight, with everything that has been so effortlessly transpiring here in hindsight.

There’s a faint tremor to Booker’s hands. A promising tug at the corner of his mouth. But his stubbornness betrays him. “No, Nile. There’s nothing to say. You and I are stuck together, on edge. Don’t let it muddle you thinking, make you believe you feel something when you don’t.”

Heat flares up in her belly. Of course he has to argue. “You don’t just get to say that and then the conversation is over! We don’t have to have all the answers now. When the storm breaks, when we get back home we can… we can regroup. Get our bearings. Talk this out.”

“You’re not listening,” he shakes his head. “This is the last I will say it; forget it ever happened.”

“So you won’t even talk to me when the storm is over?”

“Because it’s never over! It doesn’t matter where we are! If we aren’t staring into the eye of the storm, we’re still staring down the barrel of eternity. We’re still trapped in it! Surviving it together because we have no choice, no other options. And I can’t be another choice you don’t have. I can’t .”

“You told me that surviving is what you do when all your choices are taken away. Right now, you’re taking my choices, Book. Your deciding for me, when I never asked to.”

And Booker laughs. Laughs so deep it sounds like he might go hoarse. “Your choice can’t be me. Trust me, it’s for the best.”

Nile doesn’t know how to argue with that broken off sound he makes. Doesn’t know how to handle being the thing that’s hurting him. But she knows if any part of this is for the better, she’ll have to settle for worse.

“I’m sorry, I can’t do that. You said it yourself, I can’t walk away from anything.” She takes hold of Booker's bottle. Takes one swig and then another. “But you… you can’t get mad at me for this, Book. I didn’t know. You wouldn’t tell me. And you can't get mad at me every time I get shot, or there’s an accident, or if I try to save someone. It's what we do. That's not going to change. It’s not fair to expect me to, alright? And you can’t tell me what to think or feel or do or how to deal with my fucked up eternity forever, because that's literally never worked out for you. Not even once. So give it up, already.”

“Alright,” he whispers, his hands open in his lap. “I give up. You happy?”

“No, but I’m getting there,” she decides. “So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna finish this bottle. And then I'm probably gonna kiss you again. And you're just gonna have to find a way to live with that.” She drinks again. “Do you think you can do that, Booker?”

“Nile, please—”

“Well, since you asked so nicely.” She drops the bottle and it rolls over the carpet with a soft thud. She steps into his reach and his arms close around her, despite his hesitation. Her lips find his.

At first he doesn’t move. But with a stifled groan, he reciprocates. A little at first, stoking a mounting passion that overwhelms her. Half lifting her from the floor. She’s barely on her tiptoes, her arms bracing around his shoulders. Her body is all lit up, the opposite of the ice that rolled through her veins when he last pulled her up. Everything inside her feels alive, completely awake and how? How had she missed this? Nothing makes more sense then kissing him senseless.

He takes a step back towards the bedroom, never breaking their kiss. It’s easier for her to wrap her legs around him instead of trying to keep step. He clearly doesn’t mind the tactic once he’s got his hands on her ass, leveraging her up so he can get them over their threshold.

In the bed thought, that’s when he looks uncertain.

“Nile, we can… we don’t have to—”

She rolls her eyes. “Take off your clothes, Book.”

And he does.

*

She knew Booker was ruthless. Had the fact catalogued somewhere in the back of her mind. It usually only mattered in a fight. The kind of man who’s combat style boiled down to whatever works, whatever’s fastest, and whatever kills the enemy. Well, there’s no frills attached there. As such, Booker was single minded and impossible to deter. It showed most when he got a bad idea in his head. How he could follow a terrible impulse to a terrible conclusion, willingly and almost blindly because he convinced himself it needed to be done. But when he committed himself to something good, with diligence and zeal, well, Nile was learning the benefits of that.

She lay in a perfect arch, muscles and tendons locked, fingers ensnared in the bedding and trying not to scream. Trying and failing, but he can’t know the difference because his ears are boxed between her thighs. His mouth runs over her sex again and again and she’s a shaking, mewling mess. Her center tightens and the world goes white and she’s coming again. And still, he’s kissing and kissing her there as if she’s the sweetest thing he’s ever put to his lips. He does let her breathe while he turns his head to the side and leans against her thigh. His mouth glistens with the evidence of how thoroughly he’s loved her sex and Nile pulls his hair to hold on through the aftershocks.

“Let it go, Nile,” she mocks in a dazed approximation of a french accent. “Forget it ever happened, Nile. You can’t choose me, Nile.”

“Stop.” A chuckle rumbles through him. “It’s not like you can really blame me for thinking I could never—”

“Nope. Totally blaming you. Now get up here.”

He hesitates, because of course he does. Old habits die hard or something like that. No matter how stupid or ill-informed those habits might be. Nile knows that there’s something in his head telling him this makes more sense, that this works best when it’s him touching her and not the other way around. It could take forever to iron that out of his brain, and it certainly won’t happen now in their first night.

The first of many, she tells herself, swinging a leg over him. His hands run up her sides and give her gooseflesh. She can feel how much he wants her by the way their bodies align. They slide together with a kind of synchronicity that she knows he’s waited two centuries to feel. Feeling it drift higher and higher, a perfect storm in the making. One found only once in an eternity.

*

In the morning, the whole world feels new. The crystalline snow on the windowsill. The earthen wood smoke in the air. The soft puttering snores of Napoleon as he kicks his little feet in his sleep. The soft, solid breadth of Booker’s chest. The sweep of his neck. The way he just seems to know the moment she’s awake.

“I can feel you staring,” he murmurs without opening his eyes.

Nile draws up to her knees, covering half her face in the duvet. “Who’s staring? I’m not staring. And if I was staring, which I wasn’t, chances are you’re way more guilty of it than me.”

“I never… I didn’t… Any staring that I may have taken part in was committed against my will. There is no helping it when it comes to you.”

He reaches over, his fingers walking up the length of her calf. She shivers. 

“Tell me if you want me to stop.”

“I didn’t even know I wanted you to start until a couple hours ago,” she laughs. “But no. Don’t stop now.”

*

“Let me make you something to eat,” he says. Because eventually they have to get out of bed. And Nile hates the uncertainty in his eyes when he looks at her. She misses the faithful surety from last night, that made her scream and beg his name over and over. When he leaves her to head off into the kitchen, she can hear him make such a ruckus that Napoleon starts barking. Booker could only make this much noise if he’d forgotten where just about everything is. But if he’s feeling anything like she does, weightless but adrift, satiated but ravenous, then she can maybe understand.

She pulls on his plaid shirt. It’s closer than her clothing and it’s a small thrilling indulgence she allows for the walk out of the bedroom and to wrap her arms around Booker.

His breathing jumps. Like he still feels this is impossible.

“I’m trying to cook for you,” he reminds her.

“How’s that going?”

“Terribly. I can’t think. I can’t do anything.”

“Do we still have those granola bars?”

“With the peanut butter?” he asks, and she nods. She settles on the couch. He’s looking for a clean knife. And Nile wonders if there is something more she should say. If she needs to get it right now, or if she could really and truly have forever to find the words. He slips a plate in front of her and she grabs the waistband of his pants. 

It’s not meant as an invitation — though it could be — but draw him closer. For all Nile’s brazenness the night before, the morning after shouldn’t feel this timid. This overwhelming and realizing she was so unprepared for where she would land. “I want to ask you how you’re feeling… if last night was or wasn’t what you… different or less than you—”

Sit down and pulls her body to his. “Don’t start that. Don’t. You pried every ounce of honesty out of me. So let’s just not act like we didn’t both feel it.”

“It felt like forever to me. And that’s not something you say after one night.”

“ _Oui_.” Booker brushes her braids from her face. “But it wasn’t the only night. We’ve been at this longer than that.”

“How long for you, Book?” He turns away, looking bemused and a little ashamed. “Hey, you can tell me.” She is beginning to think he could tell her anything. Making him understand that, though, that would be slow going.

“I knew it from the start. The night in the cave. Didn’t accept it then. I couldn't. That took time. And when I came around to it, I figured—”

“You were just gonna keep it to yourself forever?”

“You make it sound ridiculous when you say it like that.” He kisses her again, his touch dancing beneath her hem. “And really, Nile? My shirt?”

“What, this old thing? I just threw it on.”

“Low blow. Entirely uncalled for.”

“Oh, really? Well I wouldn’t want to be unsportsmanlike. Here, you can have it back.”

*

Eventually they have to put clothes on and commit to a conversation where they remain dressed. They decide the best course of action is walking Napoleon, who is entirely fed up with both of them ignoring him. They don’t make it past the door, because Booker is still whispering in her ear where he presses her against the door. How she is brilliant, and irresistible and the most beautiful thing he will ever hold in his hands. “And as bad as a Russian winter,” she adds to his chagrin.

He groans, more embarrassment than pleasure. “Please forget I said that.”

She grips him by the back of the neck and kisses him deep, all sweet heat and waits until he opens his eyes to see her. To hear her. “I know you’ve got ideas about us, about what you are to me. But you’ll never be the absence of choices, Booker. And you aren’t just any port in a storm. And I’m not as bad a Russian winter. Or worse than a hundred years alone or a famine or pestilence or cancer or a land war in asia or any of the other terrible fucked up things that have happened to you. Alright? Because I could be the best thing that ever happened to you if you just let me—”

The air splits open with gunfire.

Because isn’t that just how it goes?

*

Nile knows she’s been nabbed when she wakes up in a room she’s never seen before. It’s freezing and dark and her hands are bound in front of her. The megalomaniac ranting in front of her has clearly underestimated her as a threat if he didn’t think to bind her behind her back.

Oh well, Nile thinks to herself, and waits. She’s in no hurry. But she does feel bad for not warning him. “Hey, cowboy. I know the game of Survive The Blizzard Like Manly Men thing hasn’t been working out for you, you’re real lonely since your friends abandoned you, but I was kind of in the middle of something before your rude little interruption.”

He blows her off. “You just sit tight and pretty. Your boyfriend will be here soon to negotiate—”

“When he gets here?” Nile rolls her eyes. Some people never knew when to quit. “If he’s not already here, he’s close. Either way I can guarantee, he is very pissed off. He doesn't like surprises and you got the drop on us, which most people can’t manage, but like I said, we were a little preoccupied with something.”

“I have the place booby trapped. If he tries anything—”

The boom of bullets rattles off in the distance. The sound of a door caving in and footsteps approaching fast.

The idiot charges at Booker as soon as he comes into view and gets tossed aside like a rag doll. Pinning the mouth of his gun to his temple, Booker pistol whips him as he berates him, “I was in the middle of an important conversation!”

Booker drops the pest like so much garbage and turns to Nile. He sees her duct tape bonds and furrows his brow. “Wait, why didn’t you just free yourself?”

She grins. “I figured you owed me a rescue.”

*

They’re almost home when Booker points out that they could have spared themselves a lot of trouble if Nile had let him kill the idiots when he wanted. “I think this is the part where you say, ‘you were right Sébastien, and I was wrong’—”

“I have never called you Sébastien, so let’s get that straight,” but Nile doesn’t miss the reaction it elicits. The brief, blink and you’ll miss it shiver. “But I could get used to it. _Sébastien_.” She rolls the word over his tongue. “Or maybe more like, _Séb—_ ” 

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“You know exactly what.”

“You’re gonna have to be a little more specific, _Sébastien.”_

*

Home isn’t empty when they arrive. Napoleon’s made a new friend. Nicky who pelts him with kisses and belly rubs and head bonks while the furry love monster rolls back and forth in the snow, keening with contentment.

Andy spots them first. “There you two are, where the hell have you been?”

“Here,” Booker shouts back, “for weeks!”

“I meant for the past two hours we’ve been waiting?”

“And why are you covered in blood?” Joe asks. “Have you been killing each other? Because if you two have, that means you’ve lost yet another bet, my love.”

Nicky doesn’t seem to mind. He’s barely noticed they’ve arrived. “Who is a good boy? Who? Could it be you? I think it is!”

“We haven’t killed each other,” Booker sulks, defensive.

“Not for lack of trying,” Nile is quick to add.

“There was no trying of anything. Zero attempts on anyone’s life were made.”

“Well, I went in the water and died,” Nile tells Andy when they embrace warmly.

“Drowning or cold shock?” she asks.

“Cold shock, and how does everyone else know that’s a thing, except me?”

Everything after is quick. Packing away all traces of Nile and Booker and the lonely cabin on the mountainside. The clothes, the sheets, the blankets, they burn. Nile shoves the quilt from the couch to save into her duffle, along with her two favorite mugs. One for Booker: WHAT DOESN’T KILL YOU DISAPPOINTS ME. One for herself: THOU SHALL NOT TRY IT WITH ME. And of course Napoleon Bone-A-Parte who pants happily in the back of the truck with Nicky, and Joe keeps high-fiving Nile for the excellent pun. It’s good to have back an audience who appreciates her. They are ready and raring to go but Booker is lingering behind, taking a last look at the cabin. It feels smaller now. Too small for all it brought them. Maybe he’s scared to let go.

Nile leans out the window and calls after him, “Let’s go, Sébastien! Nicky says tomorrow is Christmas and you owe me a present!”

He saunters up to the door and she makes room for him inside. “I got you a dog, didn’t I?”

“Sure, but for the record, I like gold jewellery and guns.”

Joe looks back and forth between them. “Wait, did she call you Sebast— _Oh shit_. Nicolò, my heart! You’ve finally won a bet!”

_**fin.** _


End file.
